Current search technology may display a search results page that lists multiple websites with relevant information for a search query submitted by a user. In order to find desired content for the search query, a user may select a website to view the content. If the website does not present the desired content, a user may continue to select other websites to view the content or submit another search query to receive a search results page with a different listing of websites to view. Frequently users experience frustration in finding desired content when too many websites are viewed in order to find desired content and when several search queries need to be submitted to find desired content. Although functional, finding the content desired for many search queries presents a challenging task when using the current search technology.
From a user perspective, search engines may often return poor results for certain search queries. Although user interfaces for search queries may explicitly or implicitly expand search terms to help, users often learn good search terms for the desired content by iteratively submitting search terms and receiving results. Such a cyclical process of trial and error can be very inefficient and discouraging for many users. Unfortunately, the ability to refine search results by trusted communities is lacking. Instead, users are commonly presented with pages and pages of search results that represent an overwhelming space of results to be explored to find desired content. Exploring such a potentially immense results space by iteratively selecting websites to view the content is a rudimentary and cumbersome.
What is needed is a way for a user to efficiently filter search results of a search query and more effectively find the content desired. Such a system and method should support implicit or explicit refinement of search results to allow users to effectively and efficiently find the desired results.